One of my favourite songs by gospel icon Sfiso Ncwane is entitled Kulungile Baba. You may know it? It’s a firm fan favourite. But as I walked into the Grace Bible Church in Soweto on Friday morning, the words of the song stirred deep inside my heart.

Archaeologists cancel Syria dig

Sapa-dpa | 2011-06-15 14:16:15.0

Syrians flash the victory sign during a protest against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad at a refugee camp in the Turkish border town of Yayladagi in Hatay province June 15, 2011. More than 8,500 Syrians have already fled to neighbouring Turkey to escape a widening military campaign to crush protests against al-Assad. REUTERS/Umit Bektas (TURKEY - Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST SOCIETY)
Image by: UMIT BEKTAS
/
REUTERS

German archaeologists have cancelled a major dig in cooperation with Italian experts near the Syrian city of Homs because of the unrest int he country, according to an academic official.

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Germany's Tuebingen University and Italy's Udine University have led research into Qatna, a Bronze Age city that lasted for thousands of years. This season they had planned to dig into its founding layer, dating from about 3000 BC.

A Tuebingen spokesman said the dig was off because of the "unclear situation" in Syria.

Syria has been the scene of anti-government protests for months and a violent crackdown by security forces.

"A plan to put up an archaeologists' building has also been frozen," he said.

Qatna sat aside trade routes between Egypt and Mesopotamia and was the capital of an ancient kingdom.

The Italo-German dig aims to rediscover how it was built and how it looked. The evidence shows it was a laid-out town on a square pattern, occupying 100 hectares. Past digs have found cuneiform tablets and a royal burial chamber in the ruins of its palace.